Transparency. Expertise. Survival.
Patients admitted to ACUTE are regularly transferred by air-ambulance from medical hospitals where they had been admitted with various serious medical conditions such as syncope, cardiac arrhythmias, hypoglycemic seizures, failure to thrive, severe electrolyte imbalances and liver failure. Typical ACUTE patients have anorexia nervosa, restricting subtype (AN-R) or binge-purge subtype (AN-BP), with body weights less than 70% of ideal body weight (IBW), and with comorbid medical complications and marked physical deconditioning. Even these severely ill patients go onto restore weight and become medically stable following expert care at ACUTE.
ACUTE is the leading source of scholarly academic research on the topic of medical complications of severe eating disorders and malnutrition, including tracking and analyzing treatment outcomes. In a 2020 outcomes study, published in the Journal of Eating Disorders, ACUTE's experts methodically examined the many medical complications of patients with extreme anorexia nervosa in an effort to inform care providers of the multitude of medical issues which may be present in these patients with extreme forms of the illness.
It describes the medical complications and treatment outcomes following hospitalization at ACUTE in the largest ever published cohort of male and female patients with extreme AN (281 study patients).
Download the ACUTE outcomes study, “Extreme anorexia nervosa: medical findings, outcomes, and inferences from a retrospective cohort.”
Long-Term Recovery
ACUTE is a single phase among many phases in the eating disorder treatment and recovery journey—albeit a life-saving phase. Patients with severe eating disorders generally discharge from ACUTE to continue recovery in an inpatient or residential behavioral treatment program capable of maintaining the patient’s medical stability gains, while patients with malnutrition from disease or illness may return to providers to begin or continue a life-saving treatment like chemotherapy, radiation, anti-retroviral therapy or surgery.
Recovery depends on a number of factors, including the patient’s medical stability, psychiatric stability, eating disorder severity, age, support system and duration of illness. For anorexia nervosa, as an example, research suggests that less than one-third of individuals are recovered at nine years and approximately two-thirds of individuals are recovered when followed up to 22 years (Eddy et al, 2017). Correlational data suggest that full weight restoration is a predictor of a more favorable outcome at follow up (Baran et al, 1995; Rigaud et al, 2011). However, the lower the percentage of ideal body weight (%IBW) at presentation, the worse the prognosis because there are generally more life-threatening medical complications.
You deserve to survive and recover. To do so, entrust your care to the world’s experts in medical treatment of eating disorders and severe malnutrition. Call ACUTE today to begin an assessment.
